Day 9 ~ Onto Yellowstone!
We finally arrived at the place we've been dreaming about for so many years. The purpose for our trip west. This is so exciting!
We left Jackson this morning and headed north. On the way to the Grand Teton park, we found the National Museum of Wildlife Art. There wasn't much time for us to go in and look at all the pieces, so we walked around outside to see some of the bigger art forms. Again, we had beautiful, sunny weather and it was really nice to be outside in the fresh mountain air.
Down the road from the art was a National Fish Hatchery, and Kevin being Kevin, we had to stop! It was a large setup indoors and outdoors, and even had a half acre pond to walk around. The views were spectacular and Panda wanted to play photographer, so she set up Kevin and I for a mini photo-shoot!
We continued on our path north and entered into the Grand Teton Park. Even though we were disappointed in not seeing moose at the habitat yesterday, we still felt it was worth the detour to try again this morning. God blessed us with perfect timing... right there, in the water we saw a mama and baby!!!! After about five minutes of drinking at the pond, they wandered back into the woods. Thank you God for that sighting!!! Definitely a highlight of our trip.
Further on down the road, we saw multitudes of bison all over the field! Hundreds!!! So many little babies -- they were adorable! Then we saw some pronghorn, and then deer crossing the road. We made it up to the Jackson Lake area and saw spectacular views of the snowy mountains and the ripples on the lake. I took so many pictures!
As we traveled down the road, we came to a very slow moving train of cars in front of us. Usually that means an animal is close by and everyone is stopping to see it. As we got closer, we noticed some BIG antlers.... right off the side of the road was a grazing bull elk. This thing was massive! Cars were creeping along the road and on the other side of the elk was a bunch of spectators. It was maybe 40 or 50 feet from our car. We had to pull over to the shoulder for photos! There were two rangers walking around the pulled off cars warning them not to get too close as this elk had charged at people and cars multiple times this week. We moved along not long after the warning.
These Grand Tetons are so majestic.... God's creation is really just breathtaking. It's so sad when you are standing around looking at the beauty and you hear people talking about "mother nature". There is no chance or accident that these wonders just "happened".
We were leaving the north end of Grand Teton Park and had to stop when Panda saw a huge heard of elk hanging around near the lake. They were meandering slowly along the grasses.
The exit from Grand Teton took us to the south entrance of Yellowstone. We traveled along for a short bit and then another traffic back-up. It's like a guessing game to figure out which animal is holding the attention of the park go-ers. This time it was a small black bear along the shoulder. We got a few pictures and then a tenth of a mile there was another back up with another black bear on the shoulder!
We had so many sightings of animals today as we traveled from the south gate of Yellowstone to the west gate of Yellowstone. It was incredible! Before we got to our hotel destination, we stopped at one of the geyser attractions: Black Sand Basin. There were plenty of smoking geysers to walk around, and one of them kept spewing every 15 minutes or so. The colors of the springs were unreal, and of course we had to talk about it since we studied that in biology this year.
We arrived at the little town of West Yellowstone in the daylight and had quite the pleasant surprise at the rustic beauty of our hotel: Three Bear Lodge. We have a room in the lodge side and it's a "Three Bears" theme! We have two queen beds and a toddler bed that the kids got a kick out of in the front part of the spacious hotel room, and then in the back area, is a connected room, also large with another queen bed. It's huge and so comfy, but I can't fit anyone in the toddler bed, so we use it as a couch. And we get to enjoy it here for three nights!!!!
At this point we have driven over 3,000 miles. Kevin has done it all. Don't let him fool you, though--I have offered multiple times every day to give him a break.
Your finally made it to your dream place-looks wonderful!!! Your pictures are fantastic and so neat seeing you all having so much fun.can’t believe the size of the moose’s antlers! You hotel sounds great and glad you are there for a few day.
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